Monday, October 26, 2015

It's odd to come back here after so long, but this tiny corner of the web has always been dedicated to my love for Halo. Seems fitting that I give it some new life to share my thoughts on Halo 5.

Part of me
has always wanted to be a game designer. It’s always been a sort of dream of
mine, even though I lack all of the skills required and never bothered to learn
them. But the idea of writing a story, of being in charge of a team that
creates these experiences that I adore so much, has always spoken to me.

For a long
time now, I’ve had an idea in my head about what would be my ideal first-person
shooter. The ideas came from a lot of different sources: Halo, Crysis, Mass
Effect, Destiny, Titanfall, even my own imagination. It is to be a heavily
story-based game. One where shooting, of course, is the main target, but the
game doesn’t shy away from taking breaks and letting you soak in information. A
game that lets characters be characters, not cardboard cutouts with guns. One
where you have access to a lot of different abilities and a lot of different
ways to tackle your objectives.

It’s
shocking how close Halo 5: Guardians came to achieving this.

It has the
mobility. It has the abilities. It has a story that doesn’t require you to
watch terminals and read novels, instead relying on characters to share the
information with you. It even has missions where you don’t have to shoot
anything. You just explore, talk and listen. It’s a bold new direction for
Halo, one 343 – for the most part- has pulled off.

343 has
stepped away from the scorched earth-policy they so ruthlessly wielded while
developing Halo 4. With Halo 5, they show they’re willing to once again embrace
that which came before. This manifests in a variety of ways. The
English-speaking Covenant, the music and the inclusion of Blue Team being the
foremost examples of that.

But not
only are they willing to embrace what’s old, they’re also willing to look back
at their own creations and change course. Allow me to demonstrate through a
direct quote from the game. “Dr. Halsey
said the plan would work. I trust her.”

You’d be
forgiven to think these are words uttered by the Master Chief or one of his
Blue Team compatriots, but you’d be wrong. These are words said by Spartan
Jameson Locke, an ex-ONI operative and one of the game’s two playable
characters. The treatment Catherine Halsey received at the hands of 343
Industries has been the source of much debate these past few years, and now we
get a character that 343 created stating he trusts
Halsey. It’s a big step forward.

This
doesn’t even just apply to Locke. When Halsey is liberated from the clutches of
Jul ‘Mdama, may he rest in peace, she isn’t treated like a criminal. She’s not
held at gunpoint or locked in a tiny room. Sure, Palmer takes her firmly by the
one arm she still has left when escorting her out, but this appears to be more
due to the urgency of the situation rather than because she is considered a war
criminal.

Palmer
herself has changed, as well. Her personality has been dialed back considerably,
becoming more of a professional Spartan as opposed to the jock that hated on
nerds she was during Spartan Ops. Over the course of the game it becomes
abundantly clear that Palmer and Halsey are even starting to develop some kind
of mutual respect for one another. Considering the events that occur
at the end of the game, it’ll be interesting to see how this relationship
develops.

That’s not
to say that the in-universe criticism of the ethics of the original SPARTAN-II
program has ceased. Buck still utters words of disgust when someone mentions
reading the original files. Halsey is even referred to as a monster by the most
unlikely of people. It’s all just a lot more nuanced and feels less like a
deliberate attempt to undermine everything that came before.

And now for
the elephant in the room: yes, you play as Locke for the majority of the game.
Twelve out of fifteen missions. The ones where you step into the Master Chief’s
power-armored boots are a bit longer than Locke’s story missions, but you’ll
still end up playing as this SPARTAN-IV for the better part of the game.

And you
know what? That’s okay.

Locke isn’t
all that different from the Master Chief. He’s been given his orders. The rest of Fireteam Osiris instills a bit more
personality into the matters, but apart from one clichéd attempt at a "we've come a long way"-speech they never feel as though they're trying to steal the spotlight from the man in the green armor. This story is still about him.

Whether
you’re controlling Locke or the Chief, your teammates are always at your side.
They’re pretty competent, as long as you don’t set the game’s difficulty to
Legendary. Their A.I. is not built to accommodate that difficulty. Taking cover
is an unknown concept to them, as is staying at range. Mark an enemy for attack
and they’ll all charge forward, whether they’re holding a sniper rifle, rocket
launcher or shotgun. Equip them with the right weapons, however, and they can
make even the most difficult encounters in the game at least a bit easier to
handle.

One such
encounter is with the Warden Eternal. We’ve all seen him at the end of the E3
gameplay demo. He makes more than one appearance in the game, and all are as a
boss you have to beat. He’s also 343’s biggest mistake in this entire game. His
character is cool, but fighting him absolutely isn’t. Not only is he armed with
several insta-kill attacks, but he’s almost always accompanied by several other
enemies. Your teammates are quick to point out that the core on his back is
vulnerable to damage, but their A.I. isn’t advanced enough to take advantage of
it. Fighting him twice in two back-to-back missions is bad enough, but then
later on the game decides to throw you at him in duplicate and even triplicate.
Considering all that went well with the game, it’s a baffling inclusion and one
I hope they learn from for their next game.

Because
there’s a lot of things this game does do well. The combat is fantastic. The
movement is great. Most of the weapons are useful, including the redesigned
Forerunner weapons. The new Binary Rifle feels like a glorious mix between a Sniper
Rifle and Reach’s Focus Rifle. Best of
all, the game keeps a silky smooth framerate as you’re playing.

The
cutscenes are pretty enough, but 343 has the weird tendency to cut them off
right when they’re about to get interesting. Roland, the A.I. aboard
the Infinity, at one point throws a great tantrum about why everyone sees
Cortana as a threat… And then fades to black before anyone can reply. When we
next see him, he’s accepted everything and doesn’t mention it ever again. Considering the strength of their storytelling in this game, moments
like these are odd and very out-of-place.

343 pulled
off something I thought they weren’t able to. They instilled an air of mystery
into their story. When the Chief goes AWOL and you learn Cortana is
not as dead as she at first seemed, you actually start having doubts. Cortana’s goals and the Chief’s motives are kept under wraps for the
first part of the game. As you’re chasing Chief, the game takes on a
bit of a mystery tone not wholly different from the feel you got when playing
ODST.

What’s most
impressive about the whole thing, however, is how 343 played us. In the
marketing, we see Locke confronting the Chief on a scarred and desolate planet.
We see two arch-enemies facing each other. None of this ends up in the game. It
was all part of a false flag operation to keep us distracted from what was
really going to happen. Media made us believe this game would be The Terminator
mixed with The Avengers, but they played us like a fiddle. This game is Halo’s
The Empire Strikes Back. It’s a tale of mystery that turns very dark and leaves
us on a somber note of uncertainty.

After I
beat the game, I started monitoring the spoiler thread on GAF. People were
clutching at straws, trying to piece together the bits and pieces of the plot
they could find. It was very interesting to see and read.

And then
someone leaked the plot online.

Immediately
the hate parade began. People started judging the story 343 told, and the way
they told it, judged on a poorly-written summary half a paragraph long. They
started complaining how 343 once again failed. How Halo's future was completely
ruined. As someone who'd experienced the story first-hand, it was appalling to
see the vitriol being spewed. People summarizing the story, getting several key
details wrong in the process, and deciding this game wasn't worth the effort of
playing.

It pained
me that I couldn't say anything.

I readily
admit I've never been 343's most fervent supporter. Halo 4 and the Master Chief
Collection, while enjoyable, left a bad taste in my mouth. But as I watched
this hate unfurl, championed by some forum dwellers with a false sense of
superiority over "knowing all the details", I suddenly realized what
it must be like to be on 343's side of the fence. To see people immediately
spewing hate over the Smartlink feature before they had a chance to explain it.
To see people bitch and moan when the ratio of Locke and Chief missions was
revealed. To not be given a chance to make the right impression, in this
culture of spoilers and instant gratification.

To me, Halo
5: Guardians told a wonderful story. It's simple and to the point. The
necessary concepts are explained naturally through the two Spartan teams'
dialogues. Most importantly, however, it leaves me feeling positive about the
future of the franchise. It's not yet perfectly told, but let us not forget
that Bungie never got it completely right either (#rememberreach). It feels like 343 is actively
trying to embrace that studio’s legacy, however, while still maintaining their
own stamp on the franchise. The gameplay is simply fantastic and the campaign
missions, bar some horribly executed boss fights, are a joy to play through.

I’ll leave
you on this note. This is HaloGAF. We’ve been through some terrible times, and
through some very good ones. Halo 5: Guardians will, undoubtedly, be divisive
again. People will criticize the story, as they’ve done ever since the first
Halo came out. People will complain about the gameplay. People will complain about
that hilarious love poem an Elite wrote for Palmer in an audio log. I encourage
everyone to try the game. I hope you’ll enjoy it as much as I did.